Category Archives: NATO

President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe’s speech at the 66th general assembly meeting in the United Nations in which he condemns the aggressive approach towards Libya, violating the UN-Charter and ignoring the peaceful attempts for negotiations and ceasefires proposed by the African Union.

As the US/NATO-led rebel forces assault the Libyan capital of Tripoli, it is important for antiwar and progressive forces to recognize a few key points. The development of events since the popular North African revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt led to some divisions among progressive forces as the imperialist countries maneuvered to take control of the situation and develop contradictions in North Africa in their favor. In Libya the U.S., France, the U.K., and Italy joined together to take advantage of the discontent among certain sections of the Libyan people, and thereby develop an armed rebel movement to topple the Gaddafi government. This criminal action taken by US and NATO forces should be condemned by all people of conscience. The success of the NATO-led rebels would certainly mean an end to an independent Libya.

The following is a comment by May9 from the debate about Slavoj Žižek. As always, posting this here doesn’t imply complete agreement on the part of the editor:

This whole conversation is ironic, considering [Mike] Ely’s earlier protests against the Comintern “universalizing” the Soviet model on everyone, but whatever.

The question of Yugoslav socialism is not as straight forward as the sectarian critique “Is Yugoslavia a Socialist Country?” would have you believe. Indeed, the Maoists themselves never had a clear position on this issue, as they vacillated between recognition of Yugoslavia as a socialist country and sectarian opposition, change which was dependent on Chinese relations with the Soviet Union, not ideology. For example, while Yugoslavia was one of the first countries to recognize the PRC in 1949, Mao didn’t reciprocate due to the split with the USSR. However in late 1954 the CCP reestablished party to party relations with the “renegade” Tito, which effectively meant recognition of Yugoslavia as a socialist country. In 1958, after the League of Communists of Yugoslavia published its draft before its party Congress in April, Yugoslavia came under fire from first and foremost the “revisionist” (or in Ely’s view, “capitalist”) Soviet Union. Following the USSR’s lead, China began polemical attacks against Yugoslavia and broke off party to party relations. In the early 1960s, the Sino-Soviet split began to be open and Yugoslav-Soviet relations improved. Chinese anti-Yugoslavism stemmed from the view that Yugoslavia was too close to Moscow. As a result, relations remained frosty until the late 1960s, at the height of the Cultural Revolution. The main reason for this is due to Yugoslav support for Czechoslovakia against the USSR. Relations from 1970-1977 were quite friendly, or at least not hostile. No longer would we hear any complaints about Tito from Mao. In 1977 Hua Guofeng, who most anti-revisionists uphold as a staunch Marxist-Leninist, reopened party to party relations with Yugoslavia – which again meant recognition of Yugoslavia as a socialist country. Not coincidentally at this time, Sino-Soviet relations were cold.

Ten NATO occupation soldiers were killed by Afghan resistance forces on June 7, marking the deadliest day on record for the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. Seven of those killed were U.S. soldiers. NATO reported that five troops were killed in an insurgent attack against a police training center, two soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing attack and one in a small arms attack. One day earlier, June 6, five NATO troops were killed in small arms fire attacks, a roadside bombing and a car crash. It is unclear if the car crash was related to a resistance attack.

An investigation into the killings of five Afghan civilians by U.S. forces on Feb. 12 has revealed that the U.S. tried to cover up its responsibility for the deaths.

On the night of Feb. 12, U.S. occupation forces entered a home in the Gardez district of Paktia province, east of the capital Kabul. The U.S. soldiers shot dead two Afghan men who were carrying weapons, then shot three pregnant women. The Afghans had been celebrating the birth of a baby. The U.S. initially claimed that the two men were Taliban fighters and that the three women were already dead when they arrived on the scene. In fact, the two men were a local police chief and a prosecutor.

Afghanistan: the days of colonial occupation are numberedInter-imperialist contradictions are being forced into the open by heroic forces of patriotic resistance.

No sooner had the polls closed in Afghanistan on 20 August than the leading representatives of the occupation regime declared this electoral farce a success. Nato’s Secretary-General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, praised the Afghan people’s determination to build democracy, while the leaders of the US, Britain, Germany and France – the main participants in the imperialist predatory war against the Afghan people – rushed to pat themselves on the back for facilitating this alleged exercise in democracy.